(two days later:)It rained all day yesterday and I wrote Anita a letter (finally). It wasn't very long. I just thanked her for taking care of Hazard (I resisted saying that, had she spent a little less time making babies and a little more time paying attention to his "distressing sounds," as Simon called them, he might not have suffered so much) and I wished them well in my old apartment (I signed and sent back the two-year lease so they could continue living there).
At about 4:30 the rain let up and I was feeling energetic so I took my cane for a walk to the Oakwood Cemetery (the entrance is barely a block-and-a-half from my front door). Very impressive. Very old. A historic sign just inside the fancy old wrought iron gate says it's the oldest cemetery in Texas and a bunch of other (interesting) stuff I intended to come home and write down, but instead I fell down.
My stairs are apparently very slippery when wet, particularly (and I guess fortunately) the fourth one up. Fortunate because, had it been, say, the eleventh one, the fall would've hurt a lot more. And judging from the way my hip feels today, it could have been fatal.
It's crazy that I'm walking around with a cane at 29. It feels/looks more like I'm 92. And I won't likely get there, so I suppose I ought to be thankful for the opportunity to be a rickety old man in this lifetime. But I'm not.
So I fell -- boom-boom-boom-boom -- and I seriously believe I could have gotten right up and kept on going, but I didn't. I just decided to feel sorry for myself (or something), just stayed put for awhile. I didn't have an inkling of a thought that anyone could see me there -- the six-foot high fence between my apartment and the college house makes it impossible for us to see each other except from the top of my staircase -- and as the standing water soaked into the front of my clothes, it was cool and felt sort of good.
But suddenly there were hands upon me, the hands of a tall black woman who was stronger than she looked in her tie-dyed house dress. That's right, it's the neighbor across the alley whom I hadn't seen until that very moment. She was very concerned about me, stood me up, placed my left hand on the stair rail while she fetched my cane and put it solidly in my right. I tried to tell her I wasn't really as hurt as it might have seemed, but it's hard to convince somebody that a person looking like me would just be lying face down at the foot of his stairs because the puddles of water soaking into his clothes was "cool and felt sort of good."
Her name is Brianne. She is chocolate brown and wears her hair in a multitude of long braids knotted into a wild collection at the back of her neck. The ends of the braids have wooden beads on them and they clack together a lot. Brianne's most striking (and unnerving) feature is her colored contact lenses, which make her eyes wish they were blue, but look more like they have sheer curtains pulled over them. Whatever. She's nice. She offered to do my laundry, which was piled up just inside the front door. I declined her offer, then when she refused my decline, I offered a compromise: I'll do them myself in your washing machine. She accepted and made me promise not to attempt to bring them over until the stairs are dry.
Apparently, she had a change of heart. This morning she showed up with a large canvas laundry bag, stuffed my clothes into it, and wouldn't take no for an answer. I don't think she noticed that I wasn't protesting, but my bruised hip necessitated my change of heart.
At about 4:30 the rain let up and I was feeling energetic so I took my cane for a walk to the Oakwood Cemetery (the entrance is barely a block-and-a-half from my front door). Very impressive. Very old. A historic sign just inside the fancy old wrought iron gate says it's the oldest cemetery in Texas and a bunch of other (interesting) stuff I intended to come home and write down, but instead I fell down.
My stairs are apparently very slippery when wet, particularly (and I guess fortunately) the fourth one up. Fortunate because, had it been, say, the eleventh one, the fall would've hurt a lot more. And judging from the way my hip feels today, it could have been fatal.
It's crazy that I'm walking around with a cane at 29. It feels/looks more like I'm 92. And I won't likely get there, so I suppose I ought to be thankful for the opportunity to be a rickety old man in this lifetime. But I'm not.
So I fell -- boom-boom-boom-boom -- and I seriously believe I could have gotten right up and kept on going, but I didn't. I just decided to feel sorry for myself (or something), just stayed put for awhile. I didn't have an inkling of a thought that anyone could see me there -- the six-foot high fence between my apartment and the college house makes it impossible for us to see each other except from the top of my staircase -- and as the standing water soaked into the front of my clothes, it was cool and felt sort of good.
But suddenly there were hands upon me, the hands of a tall black woman who was stronger than she looked in her tie-dyed house dress. That's right, it's the neighbor across the alley whom I hadn't seen until that very moment. She was very concerned about me, stood me up, placed my left hand on the stair rail while she fetched my cane and put it solidly in my right. I tried to tell her I wasn't really as hurt as it might have seemed, but it's hard to convince somebody that a person looking like me would just be lying face down at the foot of his stairs because the puddles of water soaking into his clothes was "cool and felt sort of good."
Her name is Brianne. She is chocolate brown and wears her hair in a multitude of long braids knotted into a wild collection at the back of her neck. The ends of the braids have wooden beads on them and they clack together a lot. Brianne's most striking (and unnerving) feature is her colored contact lenses, which make her eyes wish they were blue, but look more like they have sheer curtains pulled over them. Whatever. She's nice. She offered to do my laundry, which was piled up just inside the front door. I declined her offer, then when she refused my decline, I offered a compromise: I'll do them myself in your washing machine. She accepted and made me promise not to attempt to bring them over until the stairs are dry.
Apparently, she had a change of heart. This morning she showed up with a large canvas laundry bag, stuffed my clothes into it, and wouldn't take no for an answer. I don't think she noticed that I wasn't protesting, but my bruised hip necessitated my change of heart.
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